


Tracy Getting Married

by lazyroughdrafts



Series: Wonderland [1]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Angst, Boarding School AU, Chaotic Transitions, F/F, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death Mentioned, serving as a backdoor to an upcoming, some strong language, wedding au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2798060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyroughdrafts/pseuds/lazyroughdrafts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone in white. Myka looks good in her dress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In White

**Author's Note:**

> I apologised on Tumblr for this, so probably should make my apologies here as well. This is the 'Wedding AU' that nobody wants or needs (and it most certainly is not the one you lot deserve, because really so much awesome in the Bering & Wells tag, so much). But. I had to get rid of this so that I could continue, try to finish up, with the others.
> 
> 15 years ago there was an explosion, an instance of suspected corporate sabotage. The board members of Bering Frederic were aboard the company yacht Endless celebrating two major breakthroughs in cancer immunology and the decision to publish their findings in their entirety online, including the specifics concerning the vaccine formulations.

Tracy is radiant.

 

A vision in flutters of white organza and silk. Myka thinks her sister has never looked so beautiful or fragile than she does standing before the altar of wild roses next to Charles also in white, amongst the sea of white suits and dresses.

 

Blood of course, for the roses. They were always going to remember blood. They always do on wedding days. Births and celebration days.

 

More so with Liam gone just over a year now and Steve still in mourning. His is an accident on an otherwise ordinary day. But then most days are ordinary until something forces more life into them or takes it. Liam had been distracted on an otherwise ordinary day. He hadn't seen the car coming, an old white Honda civic with an already widely scuffed bumper. Ordinary, otherwise.

 

White is also a colour for death. It is also all the colours.

 

Tracy finds this strangely comforting. Leena had pursed her lips and looked away when Tracy had asked if Death followed them round like some psychotic suitor. Myka was thrown by the strangeness of the analogy. Her younger sister still likes to think of their dead as haunting their periphery as glimmering orbs, not skulking in shadows. Myka doesn't like to think about it or theorise on the nature of consciousness after death. Myka still drowns these thoughts at the bottom of a pool where she has learned to hold her breath for six minutes and eight seconds and that fraction of a second more before her lungs cave in on themselves and she is the closest she gets to being in between. Closest she gets to feeling her mother.

 

"This is what I want. We can't celebrate without our grief anyway. Can we? Can any of us?"

 

It wasn't a real question of course, just a thin margin between joy and fear. Pete had once asked his younger cousin the same question, testing the same frail margin. Coaxing a question by hedging the statement, "We're not allowed any real joy, are we Mykes? Just close enough to it to be ready kindling. That's our curse though, isn't it?" Fifteen years on and they still live in the present with a wary acceptance. Two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan later and it's the events of a summer afternoon that still rankle, that had put the burn in bottle and bullets. Made him brittle until Leena found him.

 

Myka had shrugged on both occasions, enough carnage in her eyes that neither of them could read the gesture as dismissive. Myka simply did not know. But then Tracy had looked at her. Really looked at her and then in the same breath right through her. Resplendent in her dress, Myka's heart had clenched to see her sister's lips quirk to mask a quiver. Had clenched even more tightly when Tracy breathed, "Mom..." Looking very much like she couldn't breathe for seeing orbs of light.

 

Tracy is radiant but Helena's eyes trace Myka's every movement and cling to her every curve in that dress. She thinks she will never love her sister-in-law more than she does then for saying, "I want everyone in white. Everyone." She will love her always for drawing Myka near again when she had long reconciled her loss as another casualty of her dissolute youth. She will forever love her for giving her this glimpse.

 

Myka is a vision wrapped in short white silk. Hair drawn up in a simple bun. She sees only eyes, only neck, only shoulders. Then Myka lifts her gaze away from where it affectionately hovers over Tracy and meets hers with a smile too searching to be bashful. But it is also bashful. Pink-tipped and seeking and climbing the cream of her shoulders with insistent colour. She sees only eyes, green green eyes.


	2. The Dakotans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They leave South Dakota. They arrive in London. Things that can't be happening are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief snippets of scenes leading up to Tracy's wedding. Still the backdoor for the boarding school AU.

They will arrive separately. It is second-nature now, this reflexive paranoia. Since they are the first to fly out, Pete says something about Air Force Two serving as a decoy and Leena pinches his ear hard before dragging his face down with it to kiss his cheek. “Ow. It’s true though. Ask the heir apparent herself.” Myka rolls her eyes and continues to rummage through her purse, “Aunt Irene is on the same flight. That makes you Air Force One.”  She twists her lips in private irritation, “Besides arriving separately isn’t-- It doesn’t-- Arriving separately wouldn’t solve anything.” She is furious with the contents of the purse now as she digs fruitlessly, “We’re still all going to be at the same place at the same time.” Her shoulders sag but then she straightens her spine and sets her face like the proverbial flint again.

Pete rubs at his ear as Leena steers him towards the door by the hips. He calls out to Myka over his shoulder, “Our Aunt Irene is flying commercial? Since when?”  Leena says in a low voice, _“_ They decided it was safer this way.” She glances over her shoulder to Myka and shakes her head ever so slightly it could almost be missed but it isn’t missed. They are both hoping Pete leaves it there, assumes they are alluding to precautions set in motion in the past and not referencing some new threat. Myka rubs the back of her neck having given up the search for whatever she was looking for in her bag, “Well, it’s a wonder Aunt Irene is going at all.” She says more quietly and this time almost into the purse, at the as yet unidentified object of interest hiding in that purse, “You know for Steve. I mean I should be. But obviously. I can’t.”

Leena slows their forward progress towards the exit but Pete stills entirely for a beat before he starts rubbing at the back of his neck, “It’s gotta be hard right?” Leena lowers his hand away from his neck and laces their fingers, “You know, at least him and Liam had the right idea and just eloped. I wish we’d thought of that. I guess they learned from our mistake, huh babe?” She tugs at their joined hands and draws to it before cupping his cheek, “It wasn’t a mistake. The first wedding was always going to be.” She was searching his eyes as if for the right word. “ _Trying_.”

It’s supposed to be a joyous occasion.” Myka hates that he sounds bitter. Even after everything.  Pete isn't made for bitter. So Myka is always surprised at this uncommon display. “It’s like the universe decided one day, that’s it. BAMM. No more for you.” His wandering gaze finds the pendulum on the grandfather clock. Leena rarely wears her emotions, but seems to grow sad until she’s quirking her lips and waggling her eyebrows in imitation of Pete, “As I recall, you were overcome with joy more than once that night.” Said not quite low enough for Myka not to overhear. Her face grows warm at witnessing this teasing intimacy, and she feels strangely foolish for it.

Her face already grows too warm these days at the prospect of seeing _her_ again. And if things were broken then. They certainly aren't any less now. She looks up shocked from her purse. Staring vacantly ahead and then down at the piece of folded paper between her fingers. She doesn't hear Pete at first. She doesn't. She sees his hand flash across her face as he waves her to attention. "Hey, hey Mykes. Are you okay? You went all space-cadet for a minute." She nods absently. A gesture that is not in the least reassuring as Pete's expressive face makes clear. Leena purses her lips tightly. A knowing suddenly rising like dawn across her features. Myka comes to herself then and shoots her a warning look. She shakes her head. And it is loud enough. That _don't_ is more than loud enough for Leena to nod slowly but shake her head briefly in return. And that is loud enough for Myka to know that they are going to talk about _this_. That Leena will be there to talk about _this_.

But this cannot be happening. Liam cannot be dead. The boys cannot be calling her mom. But Liam shouldn't have encouraged it. And Steve shouldn't be encouraging it. But Alex _is_ and LJ is ten months old and teething and mumbling _mamum-mamum-mamum._

 

And she, she cannot be pregnant right now. She can't. She just can't.

  
  
.............  
  
There was whispering. Vanessa and Jane were huddled around Leena who was shaking her head and looking over their shoulders to Myka's back. She was leaning against the folding balcony doors facing the first glints of evening blinking dully against the lavender sky. A phone pressed to her ear with one hand, she nervously pulled at a wayward curl at the nape of her neck with another. She twirled it between her thumb and index finger and hooked down rhythmically, and bobbed her head every so often. Leena's eyes trailed away from her and back to the sisters. She shrugged her shoulders addressing her mother-in-law, "I don't know Jane. Everyone's colours have been off for some time now." She reached out to gently cup Vanessa's elbow, "But Tracy seems happy." Vanessa nodded and placed her hand over Leena's and squeezed. "She's glowing."  She added then bit her bottom lip and looked away. Myka's agitated fingers were scratching at the back of her neck, her head no longer bobbing. No one was close enough to see how badly she was angering her skin.  
  
.............  
  
   
  
Claudia strained her ears but her eyes gave her away as they narrowed in a tell-tale look of concentration. Artie raised his considerable brows, "Come over here kiddo."  She threw her head back in a dramatic eye roll but did as she was told shuffling into his outstretched arms. Lightly gripping her shoulders he looked down at her, flicking his glasses to the bridge of his nose before he too shook his head, "Stop snooping and help me unpack." He twirled her around and nudged her forward where travel cases were neatly arranged in a row.

"Why." An elongated whine for maximum effect sharpened its way, knifing into Artie's inner ear. He lifted his head up in silent prayer to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was met not by thunder but the sound of youth in exasperation, beleaguered and slowly wilting. The secret cabal formed of the adults in her family were still speaking in hushed tones. Although Myka was no where to be seen.

"What's the point of being disgustingly rich if we still do all these menial chores for ourselves?" She threw up her hands for effect. "It's _so_ wrong."

"Claudia--" And instead of conversation-ending, it came out as a whine. A far more inferior whine that more than hinted at their skewed dynamic.

She sighed dramatically, "The butler is probably offended. Just saying."  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not minding my tenses. Sorry.


	3. Chaotic Transitions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time does not change or ameliorate some things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like to work things out for yourself, then you're in luck! This is the AU for you! If not? Then you will most probably hate this and wonder: wtf man, why? 
> 
> In which case, I have no answers for you but I am sorry.
> 
> As usual Tom Mison is my Charles. Dichen Lachman is Giselle in this universe.

When they ask she says Med School. They want her to have a plan. So she gives them one. It is an answer usually met with an overly enthusiastic response. It is accompanied by a minor physical retreat, a widening of the eyes, a slow nod. There is an inherent nobility to that response, generative of a lingering respect. Never mind that she has yet to finish school. It is a plan. It is the right plan. She can’t tell them that she wants to pack a gun. She can’t tell them that.

 

But every time anyone asks. “So, Myka what are your plans for college?” All the many ways they can ask, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” She sees a gun. A loaded gun. She wants to tell them that when she grows up she’s going to pursue a career that allows her to pull the trigger. That’s what she wants to say to them, to the polite respectful adults who ask with too much deference. She doesn’t though. She never does. She leaves it at Med School having made the mistake once of throwing out Emergency Medicine. That is a mistake never to be repeated. The knowing pity in their eyes always scalds the skin off her face. That is when she becomes, “Honey. Oh Honey.”

 

That is why she wants a gun.

 

 

1\. “may exhibit transitions, i.e. escapes from and captures[…]”

 

They’d had her going away party over the weekend at the ranch. Myka had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want a big send off at the airport. If she was being honest with herself she didn’t think she’d be able to go through with it. This leaving. This parting that she had orchestrated. This _fleeing_. Myka had never thought they would actually say yes. It came as a complete surprise when Aunt Frederic had set things in motion with a seemingly straightforward question, “Is this what you really want Myka?”

_And how are you supposed to answer a question like that?_

 

 

2\. "[...]transitions are chaotic for either [...]"

 

 

The gate will close in less than 5 minutes. Myka tries not to hold on to Tracy for the extra beat it would take to keep her there, with her, with them in South Dakota. But Tracy lets go first before squeezing her extra tightly, “Stop talking yourself out of it. I’ll be fine. I think Aunt Van might even let me join you next year.”

She raises her brow in a way that speaks all kinds of mischief and implies that Tracy is far more worldly than her thirteen years and sheltered upbringing should allow. Myka arches her own in silent disputation but nods just the same despite her utter disbelief that Aunt Vanessa or Aunt Jane or Aunt Irene for that matter (perhaps especially Aunt Irene) would let her already wayward sister wander so much as a stone’s throw out of their sight let alone away to boarding school in Surrey.

But Myka just nods fighting a losing battle with a breakaway smile and Tracy shoves at her shoulder grinning, “Don’t fight it Mouse. It’s a no win. I’m effortlessly hilarious.”

And then Myka pulls her in again, grin fading into a thin line straining at composure and whispers into her hair, “What you are is completely obnoxious. Don’t think I’m going to miss you. I won’t.” And somehow that’s what gets at Tracy. Just that, as her face begins to contort painfully in a desperate bid to rein in the violence of the emotion that threatens to surface. And that, that’s what gets Myka. Her bottom lip is quivering against her sister’s hair and Tracy is pushing her away with arms grown suddenly feeble.

 

 

 

3\. "We now assume that in the perturbed (i.e., forced, dissipative system) (Eq. I), the forcing is harmonic."

 

 

Myka in her thirties will know much more of gravity than she did even at sixteen, and wise enough to the world, to know the shoe always drops. But it is in her late twenties and on the cusp of an adulthood that threatens to constrain her entirely that she outgrows Newton and his too solid dirt. At 29, she learns enough of gravity to know that falling cares very little to be stopped and pays no mind to ground at all.  At sixteen, she had still expected a crashing into land, a satisfying thud for proof. But at 29, she comes to think that gravity does not exist at all. It is simply the nature of things to fall. And perhaps to keep falling.  
Myka, on the cusp, grows to believe that everything is falling all at once. Perhaps even the ground beneath is an illusion.

 

4."Transitions in such irregular, deterministic motion are referred to as chaotic. A transition away from motion in a potential well is called an escape."

 

 

She looked down at the twinkling city and its lavender tulle haze. The view left entirely unobstructed by the glass balcony had her heart pounding, so close as she was to the edge. That is what she was telling herself. Her hammering heart was a result of a newly developed fear of heights. The constriction in her chest, the suffocating, was the work of an unexpected heatwave, unexpected even in the depths of August. Beads of sweat trickled down her back causing the short cocktail dress to cling aggressively to her skin in the cloying heat of the much discussed weather system suffocating the city.The already swollen city further bloated by the sweltering heat and the summer hordes. From which she had some distance most days; the Bering Billions rarely present between the swell of humanity but particularly that evening. The distance was greater that evening on a rooftop bar in London amidst trees sparkling with climbing ivy-like fairy lights and bleeding warmly in the humid haze blurring her eyes and sparkling like diamonds. Sparkling and adding fire to the ones abundantly on display on necks and arms and ears. The glass in her unadorned hands almost slipped away entirely as it cooled and slicked her palm, the ice having melted into pathetic shards floating dismally in a pink concoction not of her choosing. She grasped it then so tightly that it somehow threatened to slip further. An almost fumble unseen by all but the darkest eyes.

She had thus far successfully avoided the others all evening. Enough so that she could not do so any longer without giving rise to unnecessary speculation. Setting her drink down she locked eyes with Charles who winked at her and gestured for her to join them. He made sure not to look away until her feet traveled the short distance and then smiled at her in quiet thanks before pressing a gentle kiss into Tracy’s hair. 

Myka did not have to look to feel Helena’s black eyes watching her closely. There were a closer configuration of misting fans near the lounge area where the rest of them were sat. Black eyes burning at her skin as the last stray drop of perspiration tickled between her shoulder blades before evaporating. She shuddered involuntarily as a nervous shiver crawled down her spine.

Her own eyes had landed on pale skin barely covered by that slip of a red dress and Giselle’s figure draped around her, her chiseled face resting on her shoulder between lapses when lips absentmindedly nipped at that pale shoulder punctuating her narrative. “Last I heard _she_ is back in Manitoba.”

"Well, it’s no wonder she left you. Look at you. Look at the both of you." Tracy’s voice jarred her into making eye contact with Giselle who looked up eyes beaming, "Myka! Finally, deciding to grace us with your presence." She shifted and made room next to her, squeezing her thigh warmly before addressing Tracy. "Look at both of us, what? She cannot possibly have been jealous since that is what you are clearly insinuating."

Tracy snorted and looked up at Charles, who was seated on the wide arm of the canvas single, for reinforcement that would never arrive. He removed himself from any further commentary by excusing himself, “I’d almost forgotten, best catch Valda before he mysteriously disappears again.” Leaving a chaste kiss on her lips and quirking his brows as he escaped.

"Besides, George isn’t my type." Giselle shrugged her shoulders lazily.

"You cannot be serious. You’ve practically been plastered to her neck all evening." Came the indignant but amused retort.

"That is because she has an amazing neck and her skin is very soft." Giselle offered innocently enough but her eyes flashed with mischief even as Helena lifted her brow wryly and quipped, "That is very true. But I was rather under the impression that I am in fact everybody’s type darling."

Giselle turned her body instinctively away and leaned into a very silent Myka, moving away from Helena entirely as she explained, “You’re too skinny George. You’re all harsh angles and jutting hips.”

"And you’re one to talk." She scoffed, but Helena who had been leaning forward turned in a losing attempt to catch hold of Myka’s gaze. Myka who though present looked very much removed from the lot of them.

"Exactly!" Giselle intoned almost gleefully. But I do not want to have sex with me. If it can be helped. Or you for that matter." She smirked before sighing in reminiscence, "She had the _best_ thighs. I used to worship those thighs.”

Tracy lifted her palm gesturing that she should stop right there, “Maybe spare us the details of your adventures in lovemaking Casanova. Point made! Helena isn’t your type.”

“Thank you. And for the record, Prickly Pear here is more my type.” She bounced up then and reached, offering Myka her hand, “Let’s go get a drink or ten, you beautiful silent cactus.” Myka readily obliged. Relieved to have done her duty for the evening. To be able to move away from her. From those black eyes that were watching her too closely. From that pale skin that was always too far away.

Helena strained in a futile bid to hear what Giselle whispered to Myka as they walked away, but try as she might she could not make it out.

 

"I’m very glad you’re here you know. I love her but sometimes even I don’t understand the things she does. If it’s any consolation, I think she’s desperately sorry."

Myka nodded but did not say anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title and quotes from 'Chaotic Transitions in Deterministic and Stochastic Dynamical Systems: Applications of Melnikov Processes in Engineering, Physics, and Neuroscience' by Emil Simiu


	4. The Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The transgressions of youth still haunt us sometimes. Or maybe we have become wayward ghosts ourselves because of them. Who can tell?

 

 

She won’t acknowledge the finality of those words. They tripped as she stepped back from her to say something else entirely. Something she couldn’t commit to, something too immense to casually seal with the weight of words. And yet she was not the King of Persia and Media. Their weight should not have been life or death. They should not have been irrevocable. Who is to say when death comes it doesn’t skulk like a proper creep—insinuate itself like a simpering sycophant. Those words had been death.

  
Three years on they were still a leaden pendant hanging from Myka’s slender neck. But more so. Impossibly heavy and incredibly toxic. She drifted from one soulless attachment to another. Earlier that day she had left Sam to enjoy his afternoon with the pretty blonde. Lithesome. A word she’d never before used was the first word that had popped into her head at the spectacle they presented. She didn’t begrudge him the temptation but had no desire to feel anything more than a sudden distaste for his naked form.

  
It was nothing to her. Less than she could have imagined. She had only lost time and time always took her back to a silent Helena standing in the empty square in her navy blue pea coat.  _Helena._ Sam could fuck himself raw for all she cared.

 

_Helena._

 

The leaden words. The poison that trickled through her ears as she slept. Myka was a three-year-old ghost in a woman’s body endlessly repeating the words like some death chant or poisoned mantra. Myka was always there again as spectre intently revisiting a scene.

 

The other one, Myka of flesh and blood, love and rage, was silent in front of a silent woman who when words came said, “I never think about it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like i said on tumblr, cannibalised an old piece of mine cause i thought it would fit this world...  
> And yeah. I'm lazy. So.

**Author's Note:**

> Although this universe is pretty dark, it really is (perhaps unbelievably) just a backdoor to a boarding school AU.


End file.
